How Aesop’s fables apply to today’s politics
Aesop’s animal fables, as Robin Waterfield points out in his new translation, were certainly not written for children: the animals…
Can Meghan and Harry stoop any lower?
Looking back on the Queen’s 1992 ‘annus horribilis’, the events involved – though surprising at the time – seem almost…
Beware the Qataris
I feel some sympathy for the British royal family because of the ghastly people they are forced to meet. The…
‘La Scala was maddening’: an interview with John Macfarlane, the finest set designer of his generation
Pantomime season is upon us, and unless your taste in colour runs no further than Smarties, there is no more…
In defence of first past the post
Here comes a new law in political science: Joe’s Law. As I write, the Republic of Ireland is still working…
The mythic mishmash of Wagner’s Ring
Its towering themes of gods, giants, dragons and magic were not purely Germanic in origin, whatever fever-dream they later conjured in Hitler’s brain
Out of this world: The Suicides, by Antonio di Benedetto, reviewed
Written as Argentina descended into the Dirty War, this eerie fable about a reporter investigating a spate a suicides is thrillingly original
Four legs good, two legs bad – the philosophy of Gerald Durrell
From a young man determined to protect the world’s vulnerable species, Durrell became in middle age someone who loathed the species of which he was a member
Was Graham Brady really the awesome power-broker he imagines?
His kiss-and-tell memoir implies that the past five Tory prime ministers all feared him. But the longtime Chair of the 1922 Committee was in reality no ‘kingmaker’
‘Teaching someone to draw is teaching them to look’: the year’s best art books
Subjects range from a Paleolithic bone carving to Banksy’s graffiti, via colour concepts, romanticism, tattoos and mirror painting
A rare combination of humour and pathos: the sublimely talented Neil Innes
The musician and parodist, whose mantra was ‘not to say no when there’s a way to say yes’, had a gift for creating happiness in private as well as public, as his widow poignantly attests
Learning difficulties: The University of Bliss, by Julian Stannard, reviewed
The bureaucrats have taken over, treating both academics and students as administrative nuisances in a searing satire on university life
The good soldier Maczek – a war hero betrayed
After fighting for the Allies in Hungary, France, Belgium and Holland, Stanislaw Maczek finds himself stripped of his Polish citizenship as a result of the Yalta conference
British architecture according to the Great Man school of history
Simon Jenkins seems excessively preoccupied with the flamboyant houses of the privileged, leaving his narrative tottering beneath the weight of gaudy swank
Rebels and whistleblowers: a choice of recent crime fiction
A veteran CIA officer gets involved in an anti-government movement in Bahrain, and a young British intelligence officer infiltrates a news service
